Touch of Fear Proc Analysis

[Parabola]

I've been having a look at Touch of Fear over on Brainstorm trying to figure out the best proc slotting for it. I figured this would be as good a place as any to post what I've found as I've been doing all my testing on a tank and with the radius bonus they get the best version of the power (Dark Melee on tanks is in a great place right now).

 

I ran some slightly unscientific aoe tests by jumping into a big spawn, spamming ToF and then trying to decipher the logs. This was a bit of a pain. ToF delivers 5 ticks of negative damage per target which really clutters up the logs and I still haven't worked out an easy way of exporting them. You also have to contend with variable numbers of enemies within the aoe radius and misses confusing things. But I did get one pretty clear result - the pbaoe procs show up way more than the fear or to-hit debuff procs.

This I believe is because both the fear and to-hit debuff effects apply only to the main target of the attack and it's only the damage component that is aoe. Therefore any procs from a fear, to-hit debuff or accurate to-hit debuff set will only proc on the primary target of the attack and will never apply to anyone else caught in the aoe. So this makes the pbaoe procs by far the most useful for aoe damage. The Perfect Zinger proc fired approximately as often as the pbaoe procs on my tank, I'm assuming it would be the same with a brute but you know what they say about assumptions... The Fury of the Gladiator proc also behaved like the rest of the pbaoe procs.

 

But I then got to wondering if the fear and to-hit debuff procs calculate their proc chances as if ToF were a single target power or whether they share the aoe proc chance. Plugging a 6' radius into the proc equation gives us a 35% proc chance for a 3.5ppm proc using no recharge slotting (this is the value Mids shows). If the power were being treated as a single target power the proc chance would rise to 58%. That looked to me like a difference that I should be able to see with some degree of certainty. So I slotted up ToF with the Eradication, Obliteration, Scirrocco's, Glimpse of the Abyss and Cloud Senses procs and went and whacked a pylon for a bit.

 

The results showed that I was getting a proc rate that looked a lot more like the single target 58% than the aoe 35% (in fact I was seeing a bit higher than that but this is from limited data). The really interesting bit though is that I was seeing this for all the procs not just the non pbaoe ones. There seemed to be no difference between the proc rates of the different types. So it looks like ToF might be calculating its proc chances against the main target as if it were a single target power, even for procs belonging to the aoe damage effect. This is hardly likely to change the main focus of the power but it would be a nice little bonus!

 

Based on all this I'm thinking of using the following slotting:

 

• Scirocco's Dervish - Acc/Dam/End
• Scirocco's Dervish - Lethal proc
• Obliteration - Dam
• Obliteration - Smashing proc
• Eradication - Energy proc
• Perfect Zinger - Psi proc

 

I've got enough global accuracy to get away with very little slotted directly into the power so ymmv on that. I will likely +5 the Acc/Dam/End piece as the 2 slot bonus from Scirocco's is largely forgettable, the s/l res from Obliteration has some use when exemping though.

 

With no external damage buffs this gives the power an average of 176.7 damage for each target hit in the aoe effect. If I'm right about the different proc chance for the main target this will rise to an average of 243.9 for that lucky recipient, in addition to the fear and to-hit debuff.

 

Edited to add:

Just ran a couple of extra tests with the above slotting for single target. I wanted to make sure that the higher proc rates maintained when there were no fear or to-hit debuff procs in the power, just in case something really weird was happening. But it's fine, for a single target the above slotting still achieves a 58% proc rate. That result is looking more and more reliable so I'm almost certain that is what is going on. Touch of Fear is an interesting power!

Edited February 22, 2021 by parabola
extra testing

[Parabola]

Also just tested Siphon Life and confirmed that the proc chance displayed in Mids (3.0.4.7) is incorrect because it is using the taunt radius in the proc calculation. It is showing 36% for a 3.5ppm with no recharge but the real proc chance should be 70%. @Bopper, one for you!

 

Edit: While you are there Mids also isn't picking up Alpha slot damage boosts in Touch of Fear.

Edited February 21, 2021 by parabola
Another bug